Alex ColonKingsdown Sleep Smart IntuitiveThe Sleep Smart Intuitive mattress from Kingsdown has the potential to change the way we sleep in the future, but it has some kinks to work out so we can enjoy the way we sleep right now.

The Sleep Smart Intuitive mattress from Kingsdown has the potential to change the way we sleep in the future, but it has some kinks to work out so we can enjoy the way we sleep right now.

When I started reviewing digital home technology, I never thought that part of the job would entail sleeping on a $10,000 mattress. But for the last three months I've been testing the Sleep Smart Intuitive from Kingsdown, a connected mattress that automatically adjusts to your movement, position, and sleep habits. It also tracks how well you sleep, and delivers that information via Bluetooth to an app on your mobile device. The Sleep Smart Intuitive is easily the most innovative mattress I've ever seen, and has the potential to change the way we sleep in the future. But first there are some kinks to work out, and I wouldn't recommend buying one if you're looking for a good night's sleep right now.

Pricing and DesignKingsdown sells two different mattresses with Sleep Smart technology: the Intuitive and the Progeny. The model that I reviewed, the Intuitive, automatically adjusts while you sleep, while the Progeny must be controlled manually. As with cars, you'll pay less for the manual version. A queen-size Progeny with a flat foundation sells for $4,399, while an adjustable base raises the price to $5,999. A king-size model goes for $5,999 and $6,999 respectively. The queen-size Intuitive mattress with flat foundation that I tested sells for a whopping $9,399, and an adjustable base increases the price to $10,999. A king-size mattress will set you back either $10,599 or $13,999, depending on the base. As you can see, the car metaphor is rather apt, since those Intuitive models are almost comparable in price with a brand new vehicle.

Kingsdown claims that Sleep Smart mattresses are available through select retailers nationwide, though you might have trouble finding one. The nearest Kingsdown retailers to where I live in New York are Macy's and Sleepy's, but none of the stores I contacted seemed to carry any Sleep Smart products.

If you can manage to get your hands on one, the Sleep Smart Intuitive is certainly attractive. As mentioned above, I tested the queen model with a flat base, and while it's the standard queen length and width, it's definitely thicker than your average mattress. I like the two-tone design, where the bottom two-thirds of the mattress are covered in a knitted gray material, while the latex topper is white and features a braided pattern. On the top side of the mattress (where it hits the headboard) you'll find two hoses, which are covered in a shiny black fabric. I'll explain what those are used for in the next section.

But what makes the Sleep Smart Intuitive different from other mattresses is not how it looks, but what's inside. Perhaps the most important innovation are 21 air chambers on each side of the mattress, which are controlled in six zones. The mattress connects to a box underneath that controls the amount of air needed in these chambers automatically. The idea is to provide the exact right level of support your body needs, as opposed to something like a Sleep Number bed, which forces you to guess which setting is right for you.

Setup and AppUnlike most mattresses, the Sleep Smart Intuitive requires a bit more work to set up than simply placing it on a frame before lying down. You can still do that, but in order to take advantage of all of the connected features, you need to connect the mattress to the Sleep Smart controller box. It's a big, unattractive gray box that fits just under the base. The box should be centered under the bed near the headboard, with the hose connections facing away from the bed. The hoses themselves, mentioned earlier, are marked with L and R stickers, and should be plugged in to the matching connections on the controller box. I found it pretty easy to line each hose up properly, and they snap into place securely. Once those have been attached, you can then plug the controller into a power outlet using a supplied adapter. If you happen to lose power, the air chambers in the bed will maintain their support levels until the controller is back in action.

After setting up the controller, the next step is connecting it to the Sleep Smart app. The Intuitive comes with the app preinstalled on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, an Android tablet you might remember from when it first appeared three years ago. I get that the tablet itself isn't the focus of the experience here, but it does seem a bit strange to bundle a three-year-old tablet with a $10,000 mattress. Either way, the 7-inch tablet does a perfectly acceptable job of running the Sleep Smart app, which is also available on Google Play, if you'd like to install it on another Android device. iOS users are stuck with the Galaxy Tab, as the Sleep Smart app is available for Android devices only.

A steady green light on the side of the controller box indicates that it's active and ready to pair. Make sure that Bluetooth is active on the Galaxy Tab, then pair the tablet with the Sleep Smart controller in the Bluetooth settings (if you sprung for the adjustable base, you'll need to pair that as well). The app is divided into two identical sides, with each meant to represent a side of the bed. You can choose from your profile, Dashboard, Alarm, and Bed Settings, as well as a manual Sleep button. Once connected, the app will ask you to set up a profile for yourself and a partner, which includes your name, weight, gender, and preferred sleeping position (including back, side, and stomach).

Once that information has been entered, it's time to calibrate the mattress itself. Although the bed will adjust to your body automatically over time, you can speed up the process by using Smart Measure. Tap on Bed Settings, and look for the Smart Measure graphic in the upper left corner. The controller will quickly calibrate the bed without anything on it, then the app will instruct you to lay down. It will then adjust specifically to your body, during which you'll see the progress take place on the app, and you can actually feel some of the air chambers gently inflating and deflating beneath you. The whole process only takes a few minutes, though on a few occasions when I tried to re-calibrate, it just hung at 99 percent and never finished.

Sleeping and QuantifyingSo what does sleeping on a $10,000 mattress feel like? Hot. And noisy. I've slept on latex mattresses before, but I've never slept on a mattress that gets as hot as the Intuitive. On the plus side, it's pretty easy to warm up quickly after getting under the covers on a cold winter night. On the other hand, I often found myself waking up throughout the night to throw off the blanket or remove more layers of clothing. If you find that you already get pretty toasty while sleeping, you should definitely avoid this mattress. But even I—who never had the problem before—quickly started to dread waking up in the middle of the night on top of sweat-soaked sheets (gross, I know).

Perhaps even worse than the heat, though, is the sound the mattress makes while adjusting to your body. I didn't notice it at first, even when my partner said that it was keeping him awake. But sure enough, after a couple of weeks, I started to hear it—and through two layers of pillows no less. It's like a short puff of air, follow by a longer puff, then a short one, and so on, pretty much the entire time you're in bed. It settles down when you've been in the same spot long enough, but get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and the whole process starts up again when you lay down. It's another element that actually made it harder to get to sleep and stay asleep than my traditional mattress. Kingsdown acknowledges this issue, and says that an updated controller box will solve the problem. But I'm a bit dubious, as the noise seems to be related to the sound of the air chambers in the mattress, rather than the controller box. For what it's worth, customers that have already purchased a Sleep Smart mattress can contact Kingsdown's customer service for a replacement box.

These issues aside, am I getting the best sleep of my life? Well, to be honest, the heat and the noise have introduced two new problems into my nightly routine, and I actually find it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep than I did before. Sure, the mattress itself is extremely comfortable, even the very first time you lay on it. But think about it: Even the most comfortable mattress in the world wouldn't make it easy to get to sleep on a hot summer day in room without air conditioning while someone's car alarm is going off outside of your window. That's obviously a lot more extreme than what's happening on here, but after a few months, it starts to wear on you.

I was hoping I'd be able to use the information about my sleep gathered by the app and use it to show whether my sleep quality has markedly improved over the course of testing this mattress. But the app only gathers a month's worth of data, and from January to now, there's no discernible uptick. In fact, my results are pretty much all over the place.

The app shows the number of movements you make per night, compared with your average movement per week and your average movement the previous month. It also shows your quality of sleep (in percentage), compared with your average quality of sleep for the week and the last month. Above that you get a timeline that shows when you got in bed, out of bed, the duration of time you were actually asleep, and a timeline that shows your sleep and movement.

I'm a pretty good sleeper in general, so I wasn't surprised to find that my overall quality of sleep for the previous month was rated at 80 percent. Over the last month, however, that percentage would sometimes climb just over 90 percent, or fall down into the 60s. You'd think the bed's automatic adjustments would make for continual improvement, but the numbers tell me that it's just not the case. (One quick note about the app: You can only view your sleep information while connected via Bluetooth. It doesn't permanently sync the information to the app itself, so you can't go to work and check on how you slept last night, because you won't be directly connected to the bed. That's frustrating.)

The information offered in the app doesn't get granular enough that I'd recommend it over a fitness tracker that does a decent job of monitoring your sleep, like the Fitbit Surge or the Basis Peak. The primary advantage of the Sleep Smart app is the ability to send your sleep information directly from the app to someone else, like a doctor, which could be helpful.

Potential and ConclusionsI don't mean to sound too hard on the Intuitive, because I think it has a lot of potential. In particular, there's a menu in the app for Care Center (under Bed Settings), that lets you select an area of pain in your body—hip, lower or middle back, shoulders—and the mattress will adjust itself automatically for a designated period in such a way (via a pulse, or just additional support) that it could better help you overcome the pain than just remaining static, as a traditional mattress would. That could be huge. The irony is that my partner claims the mattress has actually given him back pain since he started sleeping on it. (For the record, I feel fine.)

So while the idea of a mattress that automatically adjusts to your body as you sleep on it is undoubtedly innovative, the truth is I didn't sleep any better on the Sleep Smart Intuitive than I do on the no-name mattress I've had for 10 years. And certain aspects about the Intuitive (the heat and the noise) actually caused me to sleep worse.

If you want a better look at how you're sleeping, all you have to do is pay $100 to $200 and pick up an activity tracker that monitors your sleeping patterns. And if you want to get a better night's sleep, you can pick up a quality mattress for less than $1,000. The Kingsdown Sleep Smart Intuitive has a lot of potential, and I'm excited to see what future iterations of this mattress bring. But for right now, $10,000 is a lot of money to pay for potential. Too much.

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About the Author

Alex Colon is the managing editor of PCMag's consumer electronics team. He previously covered mobile technology for PCMag and Gigaom.
Though he does the majority of his reading and writing on various digital displays, Alex still loves to sit down with a good, old-fashioned, paper and ink book in his free time. (Not that there's anything wrong wit... See Full Bio

Kingsdown Sleep Smart Intuitive...

Kingsdown Sleep Smart Intuitive

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